I was surprised to see so many servers in North America, since that region tends to lag behind Europe and Asia for IPv6 deployment. In fact, the Asia/Pacific region has the fewest number of IPv6 servers of any RIR:

Region

Percentage

AfriNIC

0 %

APNIC

15 %

ARIN

42 %

LACNIC

0 %

RIPE NCC

42 %

While it's good to see more IPv6-enabled servers, the more important issue is increasing IPv6 traffic to the root. Just after the IPv6 glue was added to the root, the K root saw an almost five-fold increase in IPv6 traffic. However, this still only works out to 1.2% of its queries over IPv6:

The H root has similar results. While the number of IPv6 queries has steadily increased since February, 2008, it still receives less than 1% of its queries over IPv6:

The M root saw the same thing: Only 1% of their queries are over IPv6:

Comparatively speaking, there are only a handful of DNS servers on the Internet. It's fairly easy to get them IPv6-enabled. It will be a much harder task to IPv6-enable the billion+ PCs on the Internet (which is expected to double by 2014). And that number doesn't include non-PC devices, which make up an increasingly large number of network-attached devices. It's time to get to work, folks.

Last week, the I root DNS server turned on IPv6. Currently, it's only enabled at the Stockholm node. Here's a Google Map showing locations of IPv6-enable DNS root servers. Global nodes are in red; local nodes in blue: View Larger... Read More